The Exasperated Teacher Blog UK

Last January, I made 5 New Year’s Resolutions. And I’ve accomplished none of them. Well maybe one. At a push.

1. Be more positive. I feel like I was rather positive for moments of this year. But with endless car issues, the dramas of finding a new car, moving school, pre-teen hormones and the stresses of Key Stage 2 SATs becoming ever more present in my weekly life… it’s hard to maintain a positive outlook. Therefore, I’ve spent a lot of this year worrying, stress eating my own body weight in chocolate, moaning and nagging my new year 6s to sit down, zip it and do some bloomin’ work by themselves. So maybe I’ll try again in January with this one?

2. Read 12 books. Sooo… yeah…erm…😬 I think I made it through half of the first book and then the teacher-life took over again…😒 my nightly ritual of trying to read a book before bed, quite often, ending in me falling asleep with a book on my head, or on the floor beside the bed… to be fair to myself though, I have read two books over the Christmas holidays. Neither of which were on my reading list but I managed to read 2 books in the last 7 days of December. 👍🏼

3. Be more creative. I think this is possibly the only resolution I’ve managed to achieve. To some degree. Over the summer, I created some artwork for my Topic display board. I’m going to incorporate the creativity into my classroom though because my poor year 6s love art and creativity and our jam-packed timetable doesn’t allow any time or space for art activities. Our next topic is mega and I’m hoping they can help to create a collage of the main focus for the huge display board outside the classroom, in the corridor. I’ll keep you posted with how well it turns out.

4. Keep my classroom desk space tidy. Sooo, this resolution started off really well in September but by December…🙈 I can’t even look at my desk right now. It stresses me out. I know it looks a mess even now and I have to have a proper sort out of paperwork on it when I return on Wednesday.

5. Travel more. The furthest I have travelled this year is London, back in January. I haven’t even left the country at all. I had big plans to holiday solo in August but then my car broke down and I needed a new car before September, when school started again. If this resolution is to happen next year, I’m going to need to renew my passport! It expires in June. I turn 30 in October 2018 and I want to celebrate it by going abroad. Somewhere new and exciting. I must start saving up for it. Otherwise it’ll never happen! 🙈

So my attempts to keep my New Years resolutions have failed miserably. Like they do every year. So in 2018, I will only have one new year’s resolution… to not have a new year’s resolution. 🤓